Here’s how to bring your yarn with you unobtrusively so you can change colors without having to cut your yarn or weave in ends:

Knit A Plain Round Before You Switch Colors in Ribbing

Rebecca, one of the KnitFreedom Forum’s knitting angels, asked a great question this morning about adding stripes on a ribbed project, like a hat.

She was worried that the tell-tale two-color bumps would show on the purl stitches and look awful.

An easy solution to the problem is to work a knit row all the way around right when you start the new color.

Worried that it will look funny? Try it for yourself and see.

Rebecca says, “It doesn’t look bad at all! It looks great. You really can’t tell that you knitted on the purl stitches, and it transitions beautifully. I made sure to knit that round a bit on the loose side, and it still stretches very nicely.”

So there you have three tips for how to change colors in knitting and make stripes. Now go forth and stripe!

I appreciate your using big yarn and needles, too. I do have both my contacts in, but regardless, it just makes it so much easier to see what you’re doing. I’d rather be concentrating on mimicking what I’m seeing you do than putting all my efforts into squinting at a tiny picture trying to GUESS what is being done!

This is probably a stupid question, and I’m fairly sure I know the answer, but just to be sure, do you twist the yarns at the end of every row where you’re carrying up the color you’re not currently using?

Thanks for all the videos you put up. I’ve been watching silently for quite some time, but now that I finally have a question I’m speaking up.
I knit a striped sock recently, and twisted the yarns together at the end of each row, but it doesn’t look very neat. Is there a special technique to alternating colours while knitting in the round, or do I just need more practice?
Thank you,
Maya

Hi Maya! This is a great question, and it’s been cropping up all over the place now that I’ve opened the Pandora’s box of knitting stripes.

What you want to do is the Jogless Color Join – this joins the stripes so that they seem to spiral instead of stack up on top of each other with a really obvious”seam.” I’ll make a video about this ASAP and post it on my blog – give me two weeks at the most.

You are the best teacher on the planet… I have researched both procedures you demonstrate here and found answers in books and on the net and no one explains it or demonstrates it better than you… actually every single demonstration I have watched you do is the same, perfectly done, you also inspire me to grab my yarn and enjoy some time knitting. Thank you thank you thank you 8-)

Great question! The color bumps will show in a line on the back side, there’s no helping that, but what you CAN do is make sure you change colors on the “right side” every time, so that the color bumps only show on one side, instead of appearing on both sides.

Well, this is an old thread, so I don’t guess I should expect an answer, but just in case: I’m not sure how to go about making sure I get my lines in the same side. I’m having trouble counting rows/ridges as it is, so getting the extra color line on the right side seems impossible.

Great help for me who learned to knit as a young girl, got very good (made argyle socks on four thin thin thin needles ), and now am reclaiming my craft in my retirement. I want to make a blanket in 2 university colors, garter stitch, about 50 inches wide. How do I squeeze 250 stitches on my 15 circular needle? The plastic tube seems VERY short…

Thanks for all of your great tutorials, Liat!! However, I’m still a little confused about counting rows when doing stripes. I made a couple of rib knit hats for my granddaughters, and the plan was to do 10 rows of MC, 6 rows of CC and finish up with MC.
Using a clickable row counter, I started counting with the first row I worked after the cast-on. 10 clicks later, I switched to the CC, but when I went back to inspect my work, I discovered I actually had 11 rows of MC before the color change. If we’re supposed to include the stitches still on the needle as a row, should I have started with the cast-on row as ‘Row 1′ on my clicker or stopped at ‘Row 9′ on the clicker with the unworked stitches being ‘Row 10’? Friends have asked me for the ‘pattern,’ so I’d like to give them correct details.

Hm, that is a little tricky. The only thing I can think that happened is that you forgot to click one round? That would explain the problem. That’s why I don’t like relying on click counters – you can never really be sure if you remembered to click. That’s why learning how to count the rows yourself, just based on what you see, is such a useful skill.

I think you did it right – no need to change the pattern or your understanding of rows – I bet you just forgot to click. One easy way to test this theory it to do about 3 rounds on a sample swatch, using the row counter, and then look at your knitting and see if you have the same number of rows or if it happened again. Let me know what you discover!

Carrying colors on Magic Loop is no different than knitting regular magic loop – unless you mean working in Fair-Isle. If you mean Fair-Isle, yes, I explain how to do it in my course on Fair-Isle Knitting. If you mean just making stripes on Magic Loop – try it! I bet you’ll do it right. :)

Hi, Liat,
I was pushed into retirement due to a spinal problem, and lost many of my avocations for the same reason. So, as my kind (and patient) grandmother had taught me to knit, I came back to it with lots of enthusiam and was then inundated with confusion!

When I learned to knit there were a few cast-ons and bind-offs; now there are whole books of them! And the equipment is amazing -so much to learn.

Your videos are splendid. Your techniques are so helpful; you teach clearly and often anticipate my questions. I also appreciate that you demonstrate SLOWLY (I have been able to try a technique during your videos!). Other knitting videos may have useful information, but they demonstrate difficult stitches (like brioche) so fast that even if one could SEE the demonstration it is over before the beginning steps are understood. Most of us do some things well and other things seem to constantly defeat us-but I am hoping for a stocking stuffer to take one or more of your classes because you give me the confidence to believe that I CAN learn things that have been ill-explained before I found your website. (You were recommended by an advanced knitter in my knitting group.

Now I know how she learned so much!
If I were to sum up the one thing that I like best about your teaching it is that, without sacrificing details which make the difference between work adaquately done and something that looks truly good, you subtlely remind us that there is no knitting police! :-)

I am knitting the cowl that was on the cover of a recent Vogue Knitting mag. It was designed by Maie Landra and uses many colors. It is knitted in the round, so that there is no wrong side. At certain points, I am carrying 6-7 colors up the seam. Should I just cut the color each time I am finished with it? The seam looks messy to me.